The UK is out of recession but an important question remains: when better times return will everyone share in them? It is possible that Britain, like other advanced economies, could experience sustained growth that fails to improve living standards for swaths of the working population. Growth does not always raise wages – certainly not for all.
In the US, wage stagnation has been a problem for a generation. The UK experience of it is more recent. In the years before the financial crisis, real wages did not rise and family incomes were only propped up by tax credits. If the recovery sees a return to this pattern, it will be a joyless one for much of Britain.
During the next decade, structural factors will make it even less likely that growth will be broadly shared among the population. Technology will increase high- and low-skill jobs, creating a more polarised labour market. Unemployment is having an unprecedented effect on wage growth: earnings have been frozen and will remain so until employers compete for workers, rather than the other way around. State support for low-income families is set to fall. Female employment, a motor of prosperity for low- and middle-income families in the late 20th century, has stalled. Britain also needs to do more to accommodate the older worker – the number in employment has risen but not as quickly as in other advanced economies.